Rapidity in development processing and the addition of a large amounts of sensitizing dyes in recent years have been accompanied with the significant problems that the sensitizing dyes contained in a silver halide photographic material are not completely eluted during processing and that coloring (so-called residual color) remains in the photographic material.
Sensitizing dyes have been investigated which offer decreased residual color, these dyes having a hydrophilic substituent such as a sulfamoyl group and a carbamoyl group (for example, JP-A-1-147451 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese patent application) and JP-A-61-294429, JP-B-45-32749 (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an examined Japanese patent publication), and JP-A-61-77843). However, the sensitivity is not sufficient in any of those dyes since an increase in the hydrophilicity of a sensitizing dye generally lowers its absorption. Residual color also does not reach a sufficiently satisfactory level. While a residual color improvement effect can be observed in the sensitizing dyes described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,282,933 and European Patent 451816A1, a sufficient effect is not obtained in terms of compatibility of residual color with sensitivity.